How Should Small Businesses React to Coronavirus?

What do small business owners and self-employed do now? Rebel Co-Founders Simon Paine and Alan Donegan discuss how businesses should react to coronavirus and how they’re approaching the challenge.

Note: This transcription has been generated with AI and there may be errors present. 

 

Chad actually wrote in the comments Hi, Chad, that it’s about weathering the storm. And I think if you think about this in seasons, as we said earlier, this is the winter period. And I’m going to use lots of metaphors and analogies, because hopefully it’ll make sense. John, during this period, I think it’s about preparing for what comes next. So let’s say we’ve done all the brainstorming all the work, we can’t actually figure out how to make our business grow. Now, it’s about preparing for that bounce. So what skills can we improve? What can we do? What can we learn? What can we grow? How can we get ready for the next part? And I think, I’m not sure how many of the people listening have heard of the analogy of sharpening the store saw from Stephen Covey’s book Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. But this is the time to sharpen your store. And what that means is, he talks about two woodsmen in the forest, one is continuously soaring his logs and continually soaring the logs. The other is sat there, and he spends most of his time sharpening the saw, and then goes over to the log and soars through it really quickly. And I think that is if you’ve got time right now, spend it sharpening your saw. How can you learn negotiation skills, sales skills, can you chew up your website and get that to a level that when that bounce hits, you are the company that’s out there doing it. And I think I want to sharpen my sword and our business sore, so that when the bounce comes back up, and that wood is there in front of us, we can go out and chop it. And I think that’s the bit. We’ve got time. Most education is unbelievably free online. Now. There’s our stuff. There’s a huge amount out there, books are cheap, there are so many skills you could learn. The question I would be answering is, what skills are going to be important for me to build the life I want and take advantage of the bounce that is coming.

I don’t want to talk about the bounce anymore. You put me out.

So I would can we actually encourage our audience now the people who are listening right now write down that question. What skills do I need to develop to create the life I want, and take advantage of the bounce when it comes. And I would like you to actually start journaling about this and writing about it. and work out what skills though they are. Sometimes it’s great to listen to me and Simon and be inspired and have some energy and feel positive. But if you don’t do anything about this afterwards, nothing changes.

You know that the mission of the mission of pop up has always been to change the way that business is taught. And we need to get the message out there. And I think what’s happened over the last couple of days is, is suddenly we’ve all realised that blimey people need help more than ever, don’t they? I think there’s two things that I would love. Number one is what is it that you need from us? Like tell us, you know, keep to keep the conversations going. Keep asking us questions, keep giving us ideas about how we could continue to support everybody, and share and share with those people that you think might benefit from, you know, a different way of thinking at the moment. And I think you know, we’ve got some really exciting stuff planned. But the fundamental reason that we’re doing it is that we just want to help. And we know that we’re facing the challenges. We’re inventing it in real time. And if anyone saw my facebook live yesterday, you’ll know that that was being invented in real time. I don’t particularly enjoy this stuff. Alan’s been trying to get me to do videos for years, and I sort of did a few. I remember the very first video that Alan made me do and yes, they did make me do it. It was to promote our very first event in western Super Mare in 2012. He made me sit on his old cream leather sofa, and we sat next to each other, he stuck his camera, or video camera, I think we were showing off in those days, we had a video camera. And we looked a little bit like the odd couple. And you know the video that I did last night and the one before and I’ve got a couple of videos for the team that is way out of my comfort zone personally. And you know, i i Over the years I’ve not particularly enjoyed that stuff. But I think what I’m doing now is recognising that the world has changed and things are different. And if we want to, if we want to change the way that you make money, if you want to protect the way that we make money, we’ve got to change the way that we think and if it feels a bit scary, that’s good because it means you’re doing it right keep doing more of that. And I think that that would be my sort of closing thoughts on.